0:00

Hi, I'm Kristen Welker, moderator of

0:02

Meet the Press, and I want

0:05

to tell you about a very

0:07

special conversation I had for our

0:09

Meet the Moment segment. With longtime

0:11

Dateline NBC producer Dan Slepian, author

0:14

of The Sing Sing Files, this

0:16

new book follows Dan's two-decade journey

0:18

navigating the criminal justice system and

0:20

his fight to help free six

0:22

wrongly convicted men, including JJ Velasquez,

0:25

who will also join our conversation.

0:27

You can listen to the full

0:29

interview right now. Just search Meet

0:32

the Press wherever you get your

0:34

podcasts. Hi

0:38

there, it's Dan Slepian,

0:40

Dateline producer and

0:45

host of the podcast Letters from Sing

0:47

Sing. Today, I have a

0:49

special bonus episode for you to listen to.

0:52

It's an audio excerpt from my new

0:54

book, The Sing Sing Files. It's

0:57

an incredibly personal project and an

1:00

expansion of what you've heard about

1:02

in the podcast, my investigation into

1:05

the wrongful conviction of John Adrian

1:07

JJ Velasquez. In the book,

1:09

I cover not only JJ's case, but

1:11

the cases of five other men who

1:14

like JJ were locked up for

1:16

crimes they did not commit. I

1:19

take you through the stories of these six men uncovering

1:22

the different ways in which our criminal

1:24

justice system failed them. You'll

1:26

hear from me and some of the men

1:28

directly about their stories. If

1:31

you like what you hear in this episode and want

1:33

to hear more, click the link in

1:35

the episode notes to order a copy of

1:37

the book or audio book. The Sing

1:40

Sing Files is also available wherever books

1:42

and audio books are sold. Now,

1:45

here's an excerpt from The Sing Sing

1:47

Files, read by me. ",lin

1:55

introduction, JJ It

2:01

was Thanksgiving Day 2002. I

2:05

was at the Greenhaven Correctional Facility,

2:07

a maximum security prison a couple

2:09

of hours north of Manhattan, filming

2:12

a story for NBC's Dateline about

2:14

two incarcerated men who insisted they'd

2:16

been wrongfully convicted of murder. I'd

2:20

spent a lot of time around cops and courts,

2:23

but wrongful convictions and false imprisonments

2:26

were not things I knew much about when

2:28

I walked into Greenhaven's Drury Lobby that morning

2:31

and saw a woman holding the hands of

2:33

two little boys who were staring in my

2:36

direction. You're Dan, right?

2:38

said the woman, who introduced

2:40

herself as Maria Velasquez. My

2:43

son, John Adrian, we call him JJ,

2:45

is locked up here. He

2:47

was convicted of murder, but he's innocent. She

2:51

told me that JJ had heard I was coming

2:53

that day, and she told him she'd do her

2:55

best to speak with me. I

2:57

could feel her pain and desperation. Can

3:01

you help us? Maria asked. I

3:06

looked at her and then at the two

3:08

boys whom she introduced to me as JJ's

3:10

sons, Jacob age five

3:12

and John Jr. age eight. They

3:16

were polite but quiet. It

3:19

seemed like it had already been a long hard

3:21

day for them, and it

3:23

seemed like they'd already had too many

3:25

long hard days. John

3:29

Jr. was on Maria's right side. Jacob,

3:32

the littler one, was holding her

3:34

left hand. He barely

3:36

came up to her waist. He

3:39

stared up at me with these huge

3:41

confused eyes. He didn't

3:43

say a word, but I swear

3:46

he was asking me. Who

3:48

are you? Why am I here? What's

3:51

going on? How can I

3:53

make it stop? My

3:55

first thought was that regardless of their

3:57

dad's guilt or innocence, these

3:59

two little guys should have been at home

4:02

that Thanksgiving morning, running around with their

4:04

cousins, not standing in the

4:06

harsh, fluorescent lighting of a prison lobby.

4:10

Their grandmother told me that two years earlier, in

4:12

2000, a

4:14

jury had convicted her son, JJ

4:16

Velasquez, of murdering a former

4:19

New York City police officer. And

4:21

that he had been sentenced to 25 years to life.

4:25

She insisted her only child was

4:27

an innocent man. Frankly,

4:31

I doubted it. I

4:33

was there investigating the claims of two other

4:35

men who insisted they were innocent, and I still

4:37

didn't know if they were telling the truth.

4:40

What were the odds that another wrongfully convicted

4:43

person would be in the same part of

4:45

the same prison? I

4:47

told Maria that I couldn't make any promises,

4:49

but I would read about her son's case

4:52

when I could, making sure

4:54

to add that it would probably not

4:56

happen anytime soon. Even

4:58

so, she seemed relieved. She

5:01

said that for years she'd tried and failed

5:03

to get anyone to listen to her. I

5:07

wasn't a father myself yet, but

5:09

as I drove home that day, something

5:12

haunted me about those weary kids in

5:14

that prison lobby. I

5:17

couldn't get Jacob's sad, serious eyes out

5:19

of my mind. Soon

5:21

enough, I wouldn't be able to get his dad's

5:23

voice out of my head either. Looking

5:27

back on meeting those boys and their

5:29

grandmother that Thanksgiving morning, it would have

5:31

been impossible to imagine the impact those

5:34

few minutes would have on my life,

5:37

both professionally and personally. And

5:40

the way in which my relationship with JJ

5:42

would come to touch countless other lives as

5:44

well. It

5:46

marked the beginning of an odyssey

5:49

that's still ongoing and that continues

5:51

to reshape my perception of how

5:53

justice functions in this country, or

5:55

doesn't, and cause me

5:57

to reconsider how I function as a

5:59

journalist. journalist and as a human

6:01

being. This

6:04

book's title refers to the prison

6:06

officially known as Sing Sing Correctional

6:08

Facility in Ossining, New York, the

6:10

notorious maximum security prison where JJ

6:13

would spend most of the 23

6:15

years, 7 months, and

6:17

8 days of his wrongful incarceration,

6:20

and where over two decades I would visit him more

6:22

than 200 times. The

6:26

title also refers to how I came

6:28

to investigate and produce Dateline reports not

6:31

only about JJ, but also

6:33

about five other innocent men who crossed

6:35

paths with him and who were also

6:37

doing someone else's time. Their

6:40

names are David Lemus, Olmedo

6:43

Hildago, Eric Glissen, Johnny

6:46

Hincapie, and Richard Rosario.

6:50

Over the years, as my basement has

6:52

gradually grown full of boxes with their

6:55

legal paperwork, I've filmed more

6:57

than a thousand hours of interviews and

6:59

footage connected to these men and their

7:01

cases, by camera, a diary

7:03

of each of my investigations into

7:05

their claims of innocence and

7:08

the consequences of their incarceration. As

7:12

a result, I've amassed a vast

7:14

digital archive of video and audio,

7:17

a trove that allows me to

7:19

present conversations and scenes in the

7:22

pages that follow with precise detail.

7:25

Nothing is reconstructed or

7:27

embellished. In

7:29

my career as a producer for

7:32

NBC News, I've witnessed the American

7:34

criminal justice system from every perspective.

7:37

I've been embedded with detectives, prosecutors,

7:39

and defense attorneys and followed them

7:41

and their cases for months, sometimes

7:44

years. I've

7:46

interviewed countless people who committed

7:48

murder, judges, and jurors. I've

7:51

gotten to know many victims of crime

7:53

and have come to understand the devastating

7:55

impact it has on them and their

7:58

families. I've spent

8:00

several hundred days inside prisons across the

8:02

United States with the warden to run

8:04

them, with convicted killers sentenced

8:07

to death, and with the

8:09

correction officers who walked those dangerous tears

8:11

every day, hoping to

8:13

go home unharmed. And

8:16

I've toured prisons in other countries. I

8:19

even slept in a cell for

8:21

two nights in Louisiana's Angola Prison,

8:23

a former slave plantation with NBC

8:25

Nightly News and the state line

8:27

anchor Lester Holt for a

8:30

program about mass incarceration. And

8:33

I conceived and produced the first ever

8:35

televised town hall from a maximum security

8:38

prison at Sing Sing, which

8:40

was broadcast on MSNBC and moderated

8:42

by Lester. Proximity

8:45

has taught me one overwhelming

8:48

truth. We have an

8:50

undeniable crisis on our hands. There

8:54

are roughly two million Americans locked up

8:56

more than in any other country, and

8:59

our recidivism rates lead the world. I've

9:03

seen for myself the cruel reality of how

9:05

people and families have been ravaged by the

9:07

system meant to protect them. I've

9:10

come to see the inhumanity and irrationality

9:13

of that system and how

9:15

its worst aspects are revealed by the

9:17

way it handles wrongful convictions. No

9:21

one knows how many innocent people are in prison, but given

9:24

the statistical likelihood of error, the

9:27

number is staggering. Barry

9:30

Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project,

9:33

told me that he believes the most accurate

9:35

studies estimate the error of convictions at about

9:38

5%, which

9:40

would mean that as you're listening to this

9:42

right now, 100,000

9:44

people could be locked away in prison cells for crimes

9:46

they did not commit. Other

9:49

experts I've spoken with told me they believe the number

9:51

could be as high as 200,000. And

9:54

yet, only about 3,500 people

9:57

have been exonerated.